Huíla Province

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Huíla Province
Namibia Sambia Republik Kongo Demokratische Republik Kongo Botswana Provinz Cabinda Provinz Zaire Provinz Luanda Provinz Uíge Provinz Bengo Provinz Cuanza Norte Provinz Cuanza Sul Provinz Malanje Provinz Lunda Norte Provinz Lunda Sul Provinz Moxico Provinz Huambo Provinz Benguela Provinz Bié Provinz Namibe Provinz Huíla Provinz Cunene Provinz Cuando Cubangolocation
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Basic data
Country Angola
Capital Lubango
surface 75,002 km²
Residents 2,900,000 (2019)
density 39 inhabitants per km²
ISO 3166-2 AO-HUI
Website www.huila.gov.ao ( Portuguese )
politics
Governador Luís Nunes
Political party MPLA
Huíla
Huíla

Coordinates: 14 ° 39 ′  S , 14 ° 53 ′  E

Huíla is a province of the African state of Angola . It is located in the southwest of the country on the Huíla Plateau, covers an area of ​​75,002 km² and has around 2.9 million inhabitants.

geography

The province of Huíla borders the provinces of Namibe, Benguela, Huambo, Bié, Cuando Cubango and Cunene. It lies at an altitude between 1000 m and 2300 m. The Humpata plateau is at an altitude of 1900-2300 m.

climate

The climate varies between the tropical mountain climate in the northern center and the plateau of Humpata and the semi-arid climate of the lower lying areas. The extremes in temperature are 1 ° C and 34 ° C. The rainy season lasts from October to April, the mean precipitation is then between 600 and 1200 mm, the mean temperature fluctuates between 19 ° C and 21 ° C. During the dry season in the other months without rain, the humidity is relatively low and the temperatures fluctuate between 15.5 ° C and 19 ° C.

history

The first Europeans came to Huíla around 1627, and from 1881 Boers came from South Africa. In 1883–1885 the Portuguese government sent 560 settlers from Madeira to this area. By 1905 around 2000 Boers had settled in the Humpata plateau. However, most of them left the country by 1929 after the Portuguese tried to ban the use of their language in schools and to convert them to Catholicism.

From the Portuguese colonial war (1961-1975) for the independence of Angola, and the subsequent civil war in Angola (1975-2002), Huíla was only directly affected for a relatively short period of time. In 1978, however, the attack on Cassinga took place in the province , during which the South African armed forces attacked a SWAPO base near Cassinga . About 600 people died in the incident.

The post-colonial development in Angola was reflected in the province of Huíla in different ways. On the one hand, it experienced a growth that was reflected in indicators such as the establishment of two universities in Lubango (the state Universidade Mandume, named after a leader of the Ovambo in the fight against the occupation by the Portuguese, and a campus of the Universidade Privada de Angola) and showed the slow emergence of lodge tourism, in which white entrepreneurs from Namibia also took part. On the other hand, land grabbing took place in some areas on a large scale (including the appropriation of scarce water resources) in favor of high-ranking military and politicians of the regime and (generally unsuccessful) attempts to resist by the affected population, who were then protected by the Catholic Church.

administration

The province of Huíla is divided into 14 districts ( Municípios ), the capital of the province is Lubango . The 12th governor of the province has been the entrepreneur Luís Manuel da Fonseca Nunes ( MPLA ) since September 12, 2018 . Nunes, of Portuguese descent, founded the Socolil group of companies in 1989 . It has 3,000 employees and an estimated annual profit of $ 150–200 million. In addition to numerous other companies, he owns the road construction company Planasul and is the largest shareholder in the construction company Omatapalo . His fortune is estimated at over a billion US dollars. He is a member of the MPLA Central Committee and the party's Politburo. In 2009 he was promoted to General of the Angolan Armed Forces . However, he had never served in the military and was therefore derisively called "the phantom general".

The counties of the Huíla Province:

population

The original inhabitants of the region were Khoisan , of which only a few residual groups still exist. They were displaced by shepherd and shepherd peoples who exist today in the form of different ethnic groups. Most strongly represented in the province are shepherd farmers who go under the collective name Nyaneka-Khumbi , but are differentiated according to their self -image , their language, etc. and do not form a whole. The numerically strongest of these ethnic groups are the Mwila, from whose names the names for the highlands and the province are derived. The pure pastoral peoples are demographically less important; the most important of them are the Herero associated Kuval .

Favored by the relatively mild climate, there was a relatively heavy settlement by Portuguese immigrants. T. mixed with the local population. This led to the expansion and diversification of agriculture, but at the same time to the growth of cities and towns.

Huíla was only directly affected for a relatively short period of time by the political and military struggle for Angola's independence and by the civil war in Angola . These tremors, however, meant that a considerable number of Ovimbundu , fleeing from the war in the central highlands, also settled in the province of Huíla, especially in the city of Lubango. There is now also a (considerably smaller) contingent of Bakongo , who were "assimilated" in the Congo-Kinshasa and scattered across the country on their return to Angola.

economy

The main branches of economy are agriculture and forestry. Fruits and fruits are grown. The livestock industry is carried out by both nomadic drovers and large farms. Gold and iron ore mining is to be promoted. A washing plant is already in operation in Chipinda, which can process 500 tons of raw material for gold production per day. In other mines, so-called Garimpeiros extract gold in small quantities under questionable circumstances. There are only industrial sites in Lubango, Matala and Jamba.

bibliography

  • Carlos Estermann, The Ethnography of Southwest Angola , 3 vols., Gibson & Africana Publishing, New York & London, 1976
  • Mike Stead, Sean Rorison: Bradt Travel Guides , p. 208, 2010

Web links

Commons : Huíla Province  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Population statistics citypopulation.de , accessed on June 12, 2019.
  2. ↑ Perfil da Província huila.gov.ao , accessed June 12, 2019.
  3. ↑ Afrikaner "Boers In Angola", 1881 - 1975 schotanus.us , accessed on June 12, 2019.
  4. ↑ Luís Nunes - o empresário que se tornou governador da Huíla angop.ao , September 12, 2018, accessed on June 13, 2019.
  5. ↑ Phantom General in Huíla makaangola.org , July 29, 2012, accessed June 13, 2019.
  6. ↑ The colonial name was generally "Mucubal / Mucubais". Va-kuval is ethnographically correct. See Júlio Artur de Morais, Contribution à l'étude des écosystèmes pastoraux: Les Vakuvals du Chingo , doctoral thesis, Université Paris VII, 1974
  7. ↑ The best overview of the situation at the end of the colonial period can be found in Carlos Alberto Medeiros, A colonização das terras altas da Huíla (Angola) , Universidade de Lisboa & Instituto de Alta Cultura, Lisbon, 1976
  8. ↑ Huíla: Agropecuária e indústria entre as áreas prioritárias de investimento na província . angop.ao , January 27, 2018, accessed June 12, 2019 (Portuguese).
  9. ↑ Produção de ouro na Huíla está prestes a arrancar . angop.ao , April 27, 2019, accessed June 12, 2019 (Portuguese).